OTTAWA, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- There was a new surge in counterfeit banknotes last year in Canada, after the country experienced a sharp, five-year rise in currency counterfeiting starting in 2002,the Bank of Canada has found.

    A flood of fake 20 and 100 Canadian dollar bills pushed the value of successfully tendered counterfeit bills to at least 5 million Canadian dollars (4 million U.S. dollars) by Sept. 30, the bank said in an internal report.

    The figure is 50 percent higher than the 3.3 million Canadian dollars (2.6 million U.S. dollars) worth of counterfeits passed through all of 2007, the Canadian Press quoted the report as saying.

    There was a five-year rise in currency counterfeiting beginning in 2002. The problem peaked in 2004 when almost 500 of per million notes in circulation were phoney. That is four times higher than the bank's medium-term target of fewer than 100, the threshold above which counterfeiting is considered a serious threat to confidence in the economy, according to the report.

    The surge from 2002 to 2007 was attributed to the development of inexpensive, high-quality inkjet printers and other digital tools that gave criminals an edge. The bank has since introduced a series of more secure notes that have helped bring levels down again to below 100.